More on Amazon Web Services

In Class, Professor Kagan mentioned Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the benefits they offer to internet businesses who want to be able to scale their businesses using the backbone of Amazon. I decided to look into the services they offer how valuable they might be to a potential user.

Turns out Google and Microsoft both have similar applications, Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform and Google’s App Engine though they are still listed as beta programs (and Microsoft’s services were down for 22 hours three months ago.) Yahoo and Salesforce.com also have similar “cloud computing” technologies which are virtualized environments that support computing needs of consumers and are scalable to meet in flux data demands. A great aspect of the Amazon tools is the pay as you use service, which allows clients to only pay for the capacity they use as opposed to making large investments in their infrastructure only for it to be tested to the limit occasionally. Essentially, there is no limit with AWS though it could be expensive depending on how much data your site uses.

In 2007 an article said that Amazon’s web services “could also touch off a new wave of Internet entrepreneurialism by removing key cost barriers to starting and ramping up a digital business.” Recently a blogger stated, “Instead of budgeting for and acquiring hardware, setting it up, installing an operating system and several layers of complex packages, you can simply launch [AWS] and be up and running in minutes."

Another new development built on the idea of harnessing the power of Amazon is Amazon Payments which allows ecommerce sites to accept payment the same way customers of Amazon’s site, including 1-click ordering and up-sell opportunities you see during checkout. In competition with Paypal and Google Checkout, as well as Facebook on the horizon as reported in class, Amazon hopes to attract their near 100 million customer base. Users can start logging into different sites to pay using their Amazon data just as we discussed in lecture 4 with Facebook Connect and shared log ins. I think this will catch on as ecommerce sites may receive better transaction fees through Amazon Payments than their own credit card processing solution.

All in all, these tools seem extremely valuable to both small and medium sized internet companies who can harness power never deemed imaginable all on the backbone of Amazon’s proven success model.